depie

A tool that attempts install 3rd party dependencies so you don't have to!

There is a lot of duplicated work/code going into native node modules. This work could be entirely mitigated if node modules used OS packaging systems which have, for the most part, already built these dependencies.

Example usage

The primary entrypoint for depie is intended to be the package.json file. This lets you install dependencies prior to needing them. For example:

{
  "name": "example",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "a test module for depie",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1",
    "install": "echo 'var d = require(\"depie\"); d.install([\"libsodium\"])' | node"
  },
  "author": "",
  "license": "MIT",
  "dependencies": {
    "depie": "^0.1.0"
  }
}

The above would install depie using npm then libsodium using the operating systems native package manager.

Now you can build your native module without needing to repackage and rebuild all the source code for libsodium!

Package aliases

Packages are aliased to allow for a single entrypoint across all systems. This requires work, but ultimately, it will be less work/time than is spent downloading/compiling the dependent code for every install of your native module!

Here is an example of the alias for libsodium on Ubuntu:

"libsodium": "libsodium-dev"